


To Learn to Heal

by seraf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel True Forms, Big Brother Gabriel, Big Brother Michael, Brotherly Bonding, Demisexual Character, Gabriel Lives, Gabriel is Loki, Heaven's Civil War, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Lucifer Being a Dick, M/M, Michael is Baldur, Michael is free, Multi, POV Gabriel, POV Third Person, Possessive Lucifer, Post-Cage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Gabriel, Purgatory, Season 6/Season 7, Self-Harm, Torture, True Forms, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Wingfic, these are some of the darkest tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5586889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the archangels is free from the Cage, and Gabriel doesn't know which would be worse. It's a little tense when he discovers Michael's way of hiding, of coping. </p><p>First, he denies culpability. </p><p>Second, he avoids responsibility.</p><p>And third, he helps his older brother heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The Cage was open, and Gabriel could feel it.

It was - when Michael and Lucifer were caged, it was like entering a home in the winter, the doors shutting to the blustering wind, and only the faintest draft, the faintest trace of Grace, being felt from where you were now. Right now, Gabriel felt as though somebody had slammed the door open, and he was once again susceptible to frostbite.

The hair on the back of his neck rose slightly, a tingle shooting through his spine, and he swigged what was left of his drink with a grim determination, leaving a generous tip on the counter, dollar bills he had snapped up. They would disappear within weeks.

What the hell. If Michael and Lucifer were going for each others throats, the bartender wouldn’t even last that long.

He’d have to find some new disguise for himself. The Trickster was out, Sam and Dean would know who he was. The Host wasn’t an option. Naomi or Raphael or whoever was manning the reprogramming center for now would have his back slammed on a rack sooner than he could call for Father’s aid. The pagans - ever since he’d pulled that stint with Lucifer, he couldn’t exactly hide with them any more. It’s not like he was willing to give up this vessel. They were hard to find these days, and he was comfortable in it after a good few millennia. 

( The Winchesters were special because they were the first time Michael and Lucifer had vessels in the same time period. Gabriel remembered some of the vessels they’d had before. Michael, that skinny French girl he had spoken to in the - what, fifteenth century? Lucifer, the ironically named Michelangelo. )

He left the empty glass on the table and his hands in his pockets as he exited the bar, door swinging behind him. Doubtlessly, he could hide amongst the humans, as he had before. But the Winchesters had found him then, once, even if it was pure dumb luck, and Michael and Lucifer - Gabriel couldn’t help the second shiver that went down his spine as he thought about what they might do, if they learned that he had been the one to give the plaid-clad duo the keys to the cell they’d spent the past few years in.

An uneasy few weeks passed, Gabriel spending most of it with his hand either an inch away from his blade or a flask, and trying to find information or call in old contacts, anything to find out more about what had happened to his siblings, to the Cage. 

( As well as searching for any clue of what had happened in Heaven recently. He had felt Raphael’s death. That had been a long night, where some genderless pagan had found him at an underground bar for the supernatural, not drinking, but curled up around the place where his grace had once resonated with the archangel closest to him in birth. They had once been four cardinal points of the compass, and now? Raphael dead, Gabriel, a fugitive and presumed dead, Lucifer the classic Fallen child, and Father only knew what Michael was like at this point, after the War and the Cage. )

So far he knew a handful of things, that had come with some blatant bribery or threats, using his status as a recently-unvieled archangel. He had some friends among his fellow - he supposed he couldn’t really call them his fellow trickster spirits anymore, now that he was officially out of the god clique - who offered him what they knew with a nervous expression and the phrase ‘please don’t come back’ either on their lips or shining behind their eyes.

“It’s not you.” Artemis had told him at one point, when he had wound up sitting next to her on his quest for information, her mouth a hard line and her hand straying towards her bow. “But you know what the Christians have done to some of our kind. Or your brothers, for that matter.”

Gabriel wanted to protest, to say that his family was about as open to him as he was to all of them, as they always had been, but her words were fair enough.

“Besides, most of us are antsy after what Lucifer did. You say that he’s locked up, and you say that you’re not anything like your siblings, but we barely trusted you when you were Loki. How are we to trust you now?” She had left him with a bottle of literal moonshine and her hope that he succeeded in keeping Lucifer caged, and he had to admit she had a point, as usual.

( In older days, he would have made some joke about that. )

Anyway. What he knew was thus. The Cage wasn’t open, but one of them was out. ( Nobody had wanted to get closer to the Cage, or to the survivor? Ex-prisoner? to find out. ) But if Michael was out, why hadn’t he resumed command of Heaven? If Lucifer was out, why hadn’t he taken over Hell again, or killed Crowley? Had one of them actually killed the other in the Cage? How could an archangel die in Hell?

Too many questions, and Gabriel wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know all the answers.

He began working on building up a reputation as a human, an ex-janitor ex-veteran with a rich sister. He lived in Boston, bought the penthouse apartment in some fancy building, after punishing the last resident who lived there, ( Horrible guy, animal abuser and suspected rapist, as well as using his money for purposes that made bile rise to Gabriel’s mouth. At times he could see what Lucifer had seen in humanity. ) and didn’t talk much.

He learned enough. That if he paid the doorman enough, there was only a temporary female guest visiting from Russia in the penthouse apartment, and he hadn’t seen anybody who looked like Gabriel, no sir or ma’am I’m very sorry is there any other way I can help you? That there was a sweet kid on the floor beneath him who had tried to sell him Girl Scout cookies all of six times. ( Over the course of two weeks. He had bought fourteen boxes, just to see her grin, scribbled out the name and told her just to give them to her friends or something. )

He couldn’t act as a Trickster anymore, so there were no painfully appropriate punishments, but every so often, someone would just disappear. The corrupt cop who had beat up a black kid for looking suspicious. The man who periodically beat his wife. Boston was a big city, and these people went, for the most part, unmissed. 

He stayed like that, restless and purposeless, until a friend from what he was regretfully beginning to call the 'old days’ showed up.

Friga had always treated him nicely, despite - she had always felt there was something different about him, so he didn’t think the revelation would be too earth-shattering for her. She had been one of the people he had begun to call family, in the absence of his biological ones, a title extended to a small group of pagans and humans and other beings. ( Kali had been one of them, too. He wondered how she was doing, now she thought him dead. )

He was resting on his bed, shifting restlessly on the mattress and wondering if he should actually get a job, just to have something to pass the time, when she appeared. ( He had warded, of course, but there were a few loopholes he left open, in the desperate hope that someone from either of his families would not care. That he was Gabriel. That he had stopped divine plan. )

It took a second for him to sense her in the room. Friga - felt like family. Not because she would act like it sometimes, but because her energy just made everyone around her feel like they were home, wherever that may be for them. And she smelled like magic, ozone flowing off of her.

Gabriel sighed once, long and low, and swung his legs off his bed, pulling a smile onto his face to meet her.

“You don’t write, you don’t call…” He tries to joke. He does. But Friga’s frown becomes stern, and even though he’s millennia older than she, he feels somehow like a scolded child. His chin drops some, and the mirth in his slow smile doesn’t make it to his eyes. “…I’m sorry. I needed some place to hide.”

There’s a pause, Friga still watching him sternly, before she speaks. Her voice is grave, and, yes, scolding. “This isn’t about that, Loki.” So, she’s still calling him by his borrowed name. 

Gabriel wonders idly if there’s some tulpa that’s filled his position. There are still people that believe in the Norse gods, there can’t just simply - not be a Loki. He wonders if the position is still his. 

“But. I have to admit - I wish you could have told me.” There it is again, that feeling of being a scolded child, and Gabriel has to resist the urge to bow his head, shuffle his feet and mutter an apology. Father. He hasn’t felt like this since he was younger, when he disrupted a fragile nebula by flying through it, and lied about it with stardust still coating his wings. Michael had made him feel like that, then, even if they had never truly been children. 

“If it’s not for the case of mistaken identity, then why’re you here, Friga? I don’t really think the pantheon wants me back. And, thick as he is, Thor could still rough me up some. Not really up for that right now.” There’s a faux lightness to his voice. And it aches, because he would happily return to that mask if he was able.

“I would support you, if you wanted to don that mask again, Gabriel.” Ah. Surprising how his name managed to hurt when Friga used it. “Regardless. I’m here because Baldur wants to talk to you, not because of any argument my family has with you.” There’s a flick of something powerful in Friga’s eyes, and Gabriel doesn’t doubt that she could quell whatever ill-speak was forming around his name. A sudden spring of affection rises in his chest, before her words hit him, and he tips his head to the side, confused.

“Baldur? I never really talked to him. Besides, isn’t he dead?”

“You were meant to kill him.” Friga stated gently. “Or - Loki was, at any rate.”

“One of the signs of Ragnarok,” Gabriel recalled, brow still clenched in slight confusion. “Well - it wasn’t apparently the last Apocalypse I disrupted. Where’s he now? And why isn’t he here?”

“He did die. At your brother’s hands - there wasn’t just one time where he killed some of us. We found no way to make the angels swear not to kill him, after all.” There’s something bitter in Friga’s voice, and without thinking, Gabriel’s hand moves to rest on her shoulder. She looks at him, expression questioning for a moment, but doesn’t snap at him to remove it. “He’s not here because they can’t trust you, Loki. Not only were you destined to kill him, but now we know you’re not one of us.”

“Screw destiny.” Gabriel murmurs, a wry smile absently twisting the left side of his face. “I’ll meet him, wherever he is. And - even if I’m not made pagan, I still consider you to be my family more than those winged dickheads up there ever were.” He tucks his hands into his pockets and looks away, not really sure he wants to see Friga’s reaction to that. “Tell me where he is?”

Friga told him the location, and then, looking deeply sad, leaned up to kiss his forehead. “Feel free to visit, Gabriel. We miss you.”

When he waved goodbye and promised that he would, he hated how the lie sat sour on his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Actually a week later, like promised. Tell me what you think?

Baldur, apparently, had decided a good meeting place was another seedy Trickster bar. ( Well. Seedy in comparison to other Trickster bars he’d seen around. They came and went, what with this species’ ability to create and erase with snaps of their fingers. This one was only about thirty years old, and the ceiling was cast with mirrors and intricate gold designs. A bit too glamorous for Gabriel’s liking. )

 

Of course, this gave everyone the opportunity to stare at him with all their eyes as he stepped through the doors. If everyone was watching him, he might as well make it look as if that’s what he wanted. So, wiping any sign that he was uncomfortable off of his face, he took a bow with a dramatic flourish. Which sent everyone back to their drinks, muttering in languages modern, dead, and dying, and Gabriel scanned the room, looking for Baldur.

 

He recognized the form as Baldur’s a split second before the connection was made that nearly fried his brain cells, and he stopped dead in the room.

 

Baldur looked normal enough, or as normal as a Norse god could get, dark hair long, wavy, and tied in a ponytail, eyes a stunning gold bright enough nearly to rival an angel’s, and in a neat, pressed, black dress shirt and pants, feet bare and swinging idly against the bar stool. He was tipping back a glass of something dark and blue, and had it not been for the sense that was overbearing Gabriel, he likely would have joined him.

 

For one, he had no idea how Baldur was alive, if he was killed by Lucifer. That wasn’t a death anyone should be able to come back from. He had escaped it by faking it - he had spent three days there, lying still as a corpse on the hotel floor and bleeding, in the fear his brother would return and realize the light show was a trick.

 

For another, Baldur smelled like Hell. Not like Hel - and why he would go there, Gabriel didn’t know, Baldur didn’t seem like the kind of pagan who would actually kill humans or something akin for the sake of it. But Hell, like brimstone and plague and open sores, and Gabriel’s mouth was dry, and he swallowed twice, trying to rid the foul aftertaste of sulfur from his mouth. running his tongue obsessively over his teeth as though he’d find the rusted metal of unspeakable instruments caught there.

 

And.

 

And. 

 

The undeniable fact that had sent his spine forced into a ramrod-straight rigidity.

 

Baldur felt like _Michael_. 

 

Not like Kali would sometimes, the faint ozone trace of his grace resting in the curve of her neck against her shoulder, lasting a day or so and virtually unrecognizable to anyone not searching for it, but - Baldur felt like Michael, or like Dean had to Gabriel. Fire and steel and ozone, the faint call to battle and a thin veil of weariness and courage draping over anyone in the vicinity. And it wasn’t residue, either - for one, Michael would never be the type to hook up with a pagan, or anyone else, really, and for another, it wouldn’t be that strong. Baldur usually smelled, ironically, of pine and mistletoe, and some light. 

 

Now it felt like that was the residue, in comparison to Michael’s grace. 

 

He swallowed once, his throat catching, and he considered just walking out of there. It would be so easy. The door was ten steps away from him. And then Michael or Baldur or _whatever_ he was murmured something to the bartender and pointed, gesturing slightly for Gabriel to come sit by him, and the youngest archangel was keenly aware of the many sets of eyes directed on him.

 

_Fuck_. 

 

He feigned nonchalance as he sat by Baldur, swinging his legs up and leaning onto the back of the stool and ordering something neon green and sweet and probably enough to fuck up his vessel’s insides for the next three years. He didn’t care. It’s not as if the human would be drinking it, and he would likely need it to deal with this conversation. When the bartender handed him his drink - without any of the suspicious looks, Gabriel was pleased to note - he tipped it back, and stared unsubtly at Michael. Baldur. Both of which should be dead right now, but very notably _weren’t_. 

 

It didn’t take a genius to riddle out that he could be blamed for both of their not-deaths, and that thought was enough for him to swig the rest of his drink, swirling the dregs as he watched his companion, who seemed to be enjoying taking his sweet time.

 

Baldur finished the last sip of his dark blue drink, the corners of his lips stained purple and now, they curled back into a soft smile. Almost reassuring. If he didn’t know who was connected to them, who might be connected to them - if Baldur didn’t feel like Michael, and that smile didn’t look like Michael’s.

 

A test was in order.

 

It wasn’t much of one, simply Gabriel breathing ‘ _Esiasch_ ’ over the rim of his second drink when he saw Baldur crossing his arms on the dark polished wood of the bar, seemingly content in the silence they had been sharing thus far. There was a flicker of recognition in Baldur’s eyes, and he tilted his head, just a fraction of a degree, enough to be considered a nonentity, simply the pagan god’s reaction to an odd word.

 

He nearly choked on his next sip of alcohol when Baldur murmured _Noib_ , yes, back, offering a tiny smile. The person sitting next to Michael - Gabriel was going to bite the bullet and just call him Michael now - raised an eyebrow and leaned back, ogling Gabriel. “How can you speak what he does? That’s not a human language. I’ve not been able to understand any of those winged assholes before.”

 

Michael arched an eyebrow gently. “I thought it only fair. If they can speak all we can, why not learn their tongues?”

 

Gabriel had to give him points for being a really fucking good liar, but thought he might as well nullify them for that truly horrifying innuendo. It seemed enough for their unwanted companion, though, who merely grunted, meeting Gabriel’s eyes with a squint and obvious suspicion, before sitting back. 

 

Tentatively, Gabriel reached out for Michael’s mind, for the bond that used to be between angels.

 

_ Baldur? Really? _

 

It felt like a crashing wave of fire, hot and dry and overwhelming, when Michael’s voice resonated again within his mind, and he absently pressed the cool side of his glass to his forehead. _It’s a long story. I’ll - I don’t quite know where to begin. I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling it here. A second of radio silence from Michael. They seem suspicious of you._

 

_Yeah, no shit, Sherlock_. Gabriel sighed once, long and low and hopeless. _I assume you’ll be crashing with me for a bit, to tell your story or whatever it is you want. How come you aren’t in Heaven?_

 

Michael’s face tensed, his fingers white-knuckled around the glass, and his lips becoming a hard line, stained with purple though they were. _That’s part of it. If you don’t mind, though?_

 

_ Not like I’ve got a choice, unless I want you to shiv me. This lot would likely support you. Come on, then.  _

 

He and Michael stepped down together, a motion that was somehow fluid and yet disjointed, Gabriel comfortable in this human form, and Michael’s actions seeming distinctly inhuman, graceful but robotic. They garnered a few raised eyebrows, but Gabriel sidled closer to Michael, placing an arm around his hip and shrugging once at his raised eyebrow.

 

_ Pagan gods are a bit like European royalty. There’s no shortage of incest and weird kids and fucked up family issues. _

 

In fact, he mused, Michael’s back tense where his arm was so casually slung, they seemed to attract less looks this way, most just heading back to their drinks with disinterest. Ironic, that when he was with another angel, that they saw him more as Loki, as if this were the way things were supposed to be.

 

What an odd world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

He flew them back to his apartment as soon as they exited the building, flopping over the back of a couch and resting his head on his crossed arms, pausing and watching Michael perch on the seat of an arm chair. He raised an eyebrow, as if expecting something from him. “Should I sing an opening number or something? I thought you were going to talk about, y’know.” He gestured at his brother vaguely, the black wear and bare feet and Baldur’s golden eyes.

 

Michael unfolded quietly, long legs stretched out in front of him, and bent forwards. Gabriel could hear the thin pop of bone as Michael stretched, and raised an eyebrow, unimpressed with the delay tactics. 

 

“What do you want from me?” Michael’s voice was different in this vessel. Gabriel hadn’t noticed it  before; you couldn’t really speak Enochian with an accent, but it was faint and unidentifiable and somewhat melodic. Different from many of his vessels; who had more commanding voices; this made Michael sound a hint away from a purr, and it was very … not him. Not quite something for shouting out orders. Gabriel didn’t realize he was squinting at his eldest brother until one of Michael’s eyebrows curved upwards, watching him and waiting for a reply.

 

“Your story.” Gabriel sat up, and rested his chin on his fist. “How you’re out, for one. Why you’re fucking _sane_ after going through what must have been…. what, like thousands of years of Hell? Where Baldur, of all people comes into it, and why you’re masquerading as a pagan god who can be killed by mistletoe.” Michael opened his mouth, presumably to begin an explanation, and Gabriel pointed at him, back of his eyes lighting up with the faintest trace of his grace, metallic taste of ozone filling the air. “Also, there had better be a damn good reason why you’re not in Heaven right now. I know you can feel what’s been happening there.”

 

His hands clenched into fists without his noticing, pressed by his side and jaw clenched tight, leaning forwards in the direction of his brother. Michael is pressed into the defensive, too - Gabriel can see a sharp glimpse of snow-white teeth bared, and he’s leaning forwards, and the younger aches that this is what comes naturally to them, the constant ebbing and flowing of the fight. Michael’s voice is deceptively neutral when he speaks. “That advice means nothing when it comes from you.”

 

Gabriel sits back down, looking as though Michael has just delivered him a blow to the chest, but it only lasts a second. Only a second, and then there’s the same cynical smile, and he shrugs, raising his arms like _what can you do_? 

 

“What can I say? Yeah, I left home.” His face looks made of marble now, cold and harsh and stone, as he turns on his oldest brother. “Y’wanna know why? Because apparently the reason was never good enough to penetrate _your_ thick skull.” Michael was eerily silent, and after one shaky breath, Gabriel took that as sign enough to continue. “I couldn’t stand to see all of you become weapons, Michael.” There was still no reaction, so he decided, fuck it. If he was smote for it, at least it would be a good wake-up call for the eldest.

 

“You were killing each other in _cold blood_ , Mikha’el. I saw fledglings come off the line and die a few time cycles later, and nobody cared. You and Lucifer - you used to care about each other more than anything, and you didn’t even fucking _hesitate_ when Father told you to rip out each other’s throats. I didn’t know - yeah, I fought too, some of the time, but I didn’t know how you were all becoming weapons, and so quickly. It didn’t feel like home, it felt like a battlefield, and everything that gave me reason to stay before was either dead or as good as.” There’s a flash of _hurt_ that passes across Michael’s face, sharp and bleeding, and there’s a cruel twist of satisfaction in Gabriel’s stomach that he immediately tries to shove away.

 

“You were killing one another, or at least trying your damnedest. So I left.” The repetition of it seems to sink into Michael’s skin from where Gabriel is sitting, making it final. _So I left. So I left_. It strikes Gabriel that his eldest brother, and likely Raphael, as well, probably thought he had died when he left. He wonders idly if that had made it better or worse for them. “And that’s why I gave the plaid-clad nimrods the keys to Lu’s birdcage, as well. I couldn’t stand to see either of you die, alright? I was tired of the fighting, and I thought that this had a chance of making it stop. And maybe all it got me was a blade through the chest and a whole lotta shit up homeward, but I tried.” There’s a small smile twisting up the side of his face, and it’s somehow unspeakably sad. “And in the end, that’s kind of all that matters, Mike. Not orders, not destiny. I fucking tried for something better than ending the world, and neither of you died, so.” He spread his arms, smile not making it to his eyes. 

 

Maybe it hadn’t gotten him much, in the end. But. 

 

“I would rather we had died.” It’s a flash of hollow anger from Michael, and Gabriel wants to drop his head into his hands, wants to wipe the static cling of Hellfire from his brother’s tempered steel feathers, but they are not close enough to do that, not anymore. So instead, he crosses his arms and clenches his jaw and waits for whatever storm that escapes Michael’s lips - perhaps rightfully so - to pass. Maybe it was a mistake, bringing him back to his home.

 

“I mean it, Gabriel. It - I cannot remember most of it now, because I - we - set that up to stop me from breaking when I got out, but I know that I would rather I had died. I remember that much, and I remember wishing for it again and again.” There’s a smile, in turn, on Michael’s face, and it scares Gabriel. It’s not quite sane, looking less like an expression of happiness and more like a crack, shattering whatever borrowed face Michael was using. “That’s part of the Cage, you know. I wasn’t able to die. I know that. I know that, at least.”

 

For not the first time, it occurred to Gabriel that Michael might be a little bit - not sane. It seemed that he was blocking his memories of the Cage somehow, but that didn’t ensure mental clarity. 

 

He didn’t know what to say, so he just pursed his lips. Michael seemed done, too, and Gabriel was fairly sure that if he tried to pry Michael’s story from him right now, it wouldn’t actually do anything but convince his older brother to leave, and he had to admit that he was curious.

 

Another beat passed between them, and Gabriel stood, back and shoulders tense as he approached the archangel, hands a few feet raised in front of him, in a gesture of peace. “I’m not going to make you tell all today, alright? If you do need to sleep in whatever your - “ He waved a hand at Baldur, still some perplexed by that. “- arrangement is, I’ll show you where you can stay.”

 

He had manifested another room a few seconds ago, not even bothering to add it to the exterior of the building - if you went into the second door on the right, you’d enter a master bedroom that was distinctly not in the blueprints. 

 

Michael tipped his head to the side before acquiescing, and Gabriel, careful not to look at him, tucked his hands into his pockets and led his brother to the room, opening the door with a small exaggerated bow, mimicking some of the concierges he had seen in the hotels through town. Michael didn’t say anything to him as he entered the room, just bowed his head a tenth of a degree forwards, and left Gabriel looking at a shut door and wondering what he was to do now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit more than a week, sorry, my sense of time is some wonky. But hey! Update!
> 
> Please please leave comments to tell me what you think?

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first chapter of this on an airplane, so this will thus be referred to as 'the airplane fic'. Apparently I lack the ability for things to be happy? But. Tell me what you think, and I will do my utmost best to try and update every week, or close to. If anybody wants to beta read, that would be excellent, but any comment helps!


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